


first love

by Snowblazehollyleafstar



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, The Book of Dust - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22614940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowblazehollyleafstar/pseuds/Snowblazehollyleafstar
Summary: Before she was Lyra's mother, Asriel's lover, Edward's wife, Marisa Delamare was a girl growing up in Geneva and falling in love for the first time.How the events of her childhood shaped Marisa into the woman she would grow to be.(Contains spoilers for The Secret Commonwealth)
Relationships: Marisa Coulter/Original Male Character
Kudos: 4





	1. settling

**Author's Note:**

> I know I'm writing too much, but this plotbunny just seized hold of me and wouldn't let go until I'd written it out. Hope you enjoy, and reviews are appreciated!

Marisa is sitting at the children’s table, with the usual crowd: Marcel and Cécile and Marie-Louise. And Jean-Paul of course: she can never forget Jean-Paul.

Their parents are discussing important matters of Church policy that they’re too young to understand in the next room, and the children themselves are playing poker. Gambling is a sin, but when played only for matchsticks and nothing of real value it’s harmless enough, and it’s a good way for them to learn how to bluff and conceal.

Marisa is the best at it, naturally, and she smiles confidently as she pushes three more matchsticks into the centre pile. It’s a vast pot now, more than any individual player has, and they can practically feel the tension.

Cécile is the only other player still in, and she hesitates, glancing from her dæmon, dove-formed, to the centre pile to her cards to her own dwindling pile of matchsticks. 

Marisa stares at her, meeting her eyes in a silent challenge, curious to see what comes next.

Finally, she shakes her head, her dæmon turning to a mouse, and backs down. She places her cards face-down on the table. 

Marisa allows herself the briefest smile of triumph, and Ozymandias becomes a lemur to scoop the matchsticks into her pile. Only when she’s claimed every last one of the matchsticks does she casually, nonchalantly reveal her cards: nothing more than a pair of threes.

The looks on her opponents’ faces are worth more than any matchsticks.

“Merde,” spits Cécile, and then her eyes flick hastily to the door, making sure no-one in the next room has heard her use such unladylike language. “I could have sworn you had a flush, at the least.”

“Another round?” asks Marie-Louise, gathering in the cards, but Jean-Paul shakes his head, pushes back his chair and stands up.

“Marisa,” he says, offering her his hand. “Will you walk with me.”

“I will,” replies Marisa, taking his hand and feeling a strange fluttering in her stomach. She’s felt like this a lot these past few weeks when Jean-Paul is around: it can be brought on by a stray glance, by the sound of her name in his voice, and she still can’t understand why, despite endless conversations with Ozymandias over it. She stands gracefully and allows Jean-Paul to tuck his arm in hers like a proper lady and gentleman.

Marcel automatically gets to his feet to join them, but something makes Marisa shake her head. “Not tonight, Marcel,” she says sharply, and he sinks back into his seat with a confused and rebellious expression.

Ozymandias shifts smoothly into a black cat, and Jean-Paul’s Persephone becomes a tabby. The two dæmons stalk away together, and after a pause their humans follow.

~ ~ ~

The grounds of the manor owned by Cécile’s father are expansive and quiet. Both children know their way around, and Jean-Paul leads Marisa across the lawn to a bench which swings from a tree. The dim moonlight lights their way. It’s a clear night and they can see the stars above them.

The silence and the starlight seem to combine to make Marisa feel that she’s on the edge of something new, something wonderful, and it has to do with Jean-Paul’s hand in hers and the little thrill that shoots through her when the two dæmons brush against each other.

They sit down on the bench opposite each other. Persephone springs lightly up, still in her cat-form, but Ozymandias shifts to a monkey with golden fur as he climbs onto her lap.

“Marisa,” says Jean-Paul softly. 

“Jean-Paul,” she responds, not letting go of his hand. It’s like she can’t bring herself to move because it will shatter the enchantment over this night, ruin the magic that’s working on them.

He lets go of his hand and raises it to touch her cheek, and then he pulls her gently closer and kisses her on the lips.

And she realises that she’s falling in love with him, and kisses him back with every fibre of her being, because all she wants is to be close to him. This is what she’s longed for every moment of her life, what she’s never even noticed she missed.

They cling to each other for what seems like an eternity until he finally pulls away. “Marisa,” he says. “I love you.”

“I love you,” she echoes. “Oh, Jean-Paul, I love you.” It sounds like someone else saying these words: even days ago she’d never have imagined it, but it’s happening. Marisa is in love.

He looks at her significantly and then he reaches out, but not to touch her: his hand gently brushes the golden fur of her dæmon.

Marisa had always thought it was a painful thing when someone touched your dæmon: even Maman, however angry she was, had never stooped to those depths. But right here, right now, it was the most wonderful thing. Somehow, she knew that she could trust him and love him and as long as they were together everything would be perfect.

And she knew that Ozymandias would never change again: this was his form for the rest of their lives now. Slowly, cautiously, she let her hand stroke Persephone’s head, scratch the dæmon between the ears, and saw the same wondrous change steal across his face. They kissed each other again, and again, and wished they could just stay together, with no-one else in the world.

They stayed outside for what must have been hours, only remembering just in time to return to the others, to keep up appearances. As Marisa rode home with her mother and brother in their carriage, she felt as if she’d never been happier. 

It was not to last.


	2. defeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: child abuse, violence towards daemons.

A couple of days later, Marisa is sitting at her desk in the workroom, helping Marcel with an exercise on the calculation of distances, when she hears the doorbell ring.

Both siblings instantly listen, curious to find out who it is, but Marisa continues to explain: “See, all that you have to do is divide by – “

“Isn’t that Jean-Paul’s voice?” asks Marcel. 

Almost before he’s finished the question Marisa and Ozymandias are running for the door. It is, indeed, Jean-Paul, trying to talk to Maman.

“I’ve told you; Marisa is busy. You can leave a message or come back later.”

“Marisa!” says Jean-Paul. His eyes light up as he sees her, but he’s shifting back and forth, biting his lip, worried about something. “Come with me, I need to tell you something important.”

But Maman is still there, and she snaps “Marisa, you are not to run off with strange boys. I forbid you from going.”

She might have argued, but she can see Maman is about to slam the door, and she knows she needs to hear this, whatever it is, so she does what she never thought she’d dare to do: darts past Maman, out of the door, and runs as if the hounds of Hell were after her.

Jean-Paul snatches her hand and joins her, and both of them and their dæmons tear out of the gate and don’t stop running until they’re three streets away, gasping for breath.

“Whatever this is,” says Marisa, “it had better be worth it. Maman will kill me when I get back.”

Jean-Paul frowns, and hesitates, and then says in a rush “My father has lost his position in the Society.”

Jean-Paul’s father works – worked – as part of the Society for the Works of the Holy Spirit. He’d joined the priesthood only a few years ago after the death of his wife in not entirely unsuspicious circumstances.

“What? But – why – “ asks Marisa. “How – I don’t understand.”

“Some… shall we say, compromising information about his private life has been revealed. Information, he told me, that only your mother knew.”

“You’re saying my mother exposed your father’s secrets to destroy his career? Why?”

“That’s the part I don’t know – even my father says he can’t understand what she has against him, they’ve always been allies – but that’s not the worst of it.”

Marisa smiles grimly. “Go on. Tell me.”

“We’ll have to leave Geneva – I’ll have to leave you.”

“No,” says Marisa flatly. “No, you can’t. Not when we’ve only just realised – when we had all these years stretching before us, we could have had a future together. We’re going to have a future together. You can’t be leaving Geneva. You can’t.”

She’s clutching Ozymandias to her chest now, burying her face in his silky fur, determined that she won’t cry, because she’s too old to cry. 

Jean-Paul just shakes his head sadly. “It’s true. We leave tomorrow: my father’s been reassigned to a missions somewhere in Asia, and I doubt they’ll let him come back in a hurry.”

“Tomorrow? I won’t see you again?”

He shakes his head again.

“Then let’s have this one day,” says Marisa suddenly, defiant and passionate as she never knew she could be. “I don’t care what anyone says, but we’ll have this last day together and do whatever we want.”

He nods, eyes gleaming. “Where shall we go first?”

~ ~ ~

They wander the streets of Geneva all day, doing whatever takes their fancy: they buy all kinds of local delicacies from the market and eat them slowly, savouring every bite; they wander in the parks together, holding hands, meandering in no particular direction; they go into the library and manage to read half a book on experimental theology before the librarian kicks them out.

By the time they’re a safe distance from the library, and they’re sure no-one’s after them, it’s starting to get dark. 

“We have to go back,” says Marisa, gritting her teeth. 

“We could stay like this. We could just live together, just you and me – “

“We couldn’t. Not for long. We have to go back.”

They kiss one last time, and then they turn and walk away from each other, knowing they’ll never meet again. Marisa feels flat and empty, but she hasn’t cried yet, and she thanks God for that small mercy.

She walks home slowly, dreading the inevitable moment when she will have to face Maman’s wrath. She doesn’t go to the front door – if she knows Maman at all the servants will be ordered not to let her in.

Instead she walks around the side of the house to where there’s a large oak tree growing right beside her room’s balcony. She knows she can climb it, sneak in, delay the inevitable, and that’s what she does: monkeys are good climbers, after all, and she doesn’t have one for her dæmon for nothing. 

But as she pulls herself onto the balcony and over the rail, she sees a maidservant sitting in her room. She knows the woman has seen her, and isn’t surprised when she immediately gets up to leave: to inform Maman that her errant daughter has returned.

Marisa supresses a shudder as Ozymandias snatches up the little key hidden under the flowerpot. She takes it from him, twists it deftly in the lock and slides back the glass door to let herself into her room.

“Change into a pretty dress,” says Ozymandias. “At the very least one that isn’t covered in mud from a tree.”

Marisa nods. She obeys her dæmon, fingers trembling, as quickly as she can, putting on a blue floaty affair she got for her last birthday: she hates it, but she knows how beautiful she looks in it. She combs back her hair quickly and then sits neatly, primly, properly on her bed, waiting for the inevitable summons.

It comes only a minute later: the same maidservant as before, here to tell her “Your mother will see you in the parlour now, Miss Delamare.”

Marisa gets to her feet and scoops her dæmon up in her arms: he’s safe from her mother’s wicked lizard there. And if he can’t hurt them this encounter will be… maybe not a victory, but less of a terrible defeat than it would be.

Then she stalks as haughtily as she knows how from the room, head held high, not looking to either side. She may be marching to her doom, but she’s not going to let anyone, least of all her mother, see her fear.

~ ~ ~

The parlour is a small white-washed room with no windows and only a table and two chairs. Marisa has only ever been there when she’s been in trouble, so the room holds many unpleasant and painful memories.

Her mother stands up as she walks into the room. “Marisa,” she says.

“Maman,” replies Marisa. She doesn’t nod in respect, she stares straight ahead, meeting her mother’s eyes unflinchingly.

“You deliberately disobeyed me.”

“I did,” replies Marisa softly. She isn’t going to lie: she can’t lie to her mother, not yet, and besides it wouldn’t do her any good.

“You ran off with that boy against my explicit instructions.”

“I did,” replies Marisa once more. She wonders why Maman is suddenly so disapproving of Jean-Paul: she’s never had a bad word to say about him before. 

“You climbed a tree to get into your own room.”

“I knew you wouldn’t let me in.”

“Too right I wouldn’t have,” snaps Maman. “Marisa, do you take me for a fool?”

“I – no, Maman. I don’t.”

“Do you think I don’t know what happens when a boy and a girl go for a walk together and come back with settled dæmons?”

Oh. So that’s what this is all about. Now she understands. She says nothing, waiting to see what her mother does.

“You’ve given in to temptation,” spits her mother. “To original sin. It might feel good now, but sooner or later it’ll catch up with you. And that’s why I’ve removed the source of your temptation, and why you are going to reform yourself at once.”

“You – you ruined his father’s career, sent him away to Asia – just so I could never see him again?” Marisa hates her mother in that moment, knows what she has done is unforgivable. Her heart is pounding with anger, overtaking her fear.

“Yes, of course.”

“I hate you!” screams Marisa. “You’re wrong! You’re wrong about everything, it’s not original sin, it’s good! It makes me happy!” 

Her mother sighs softly. Then she reaches out and tears Ozymandias from Marisa’s arms, hands wrapped tight around his throat, almost choking the dæmon.

This doesn’t feel anything like the last time someone touched her dæmon: now it’s an invasion of her privacy, like her mother is touching parts of her that should never be touched. And it hurts: it’s just so wrong, so unnatural.

“Stop,” she says. “Please. Let go of him. I’m sorry, Maman, I’ll do penance, I’ll make it up to you, just let go of him!”

“Not good enough,” says Maman, and she hurls Ozymandias bodily against the wall. 

Marisa feels her legs collapse under her instantly and she falls to the floor, feeling weak and powerless, as she always is against Maman. She should have known better than to lose her temper like that.

Maman sweeps coldly from the room, and before Marisa can get to her feet and follow the door is slammed shut and she hears the unmistakable sound of the key turning in the lock.

She’s trapped.


	3. broken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same TW as last chapter - child abuse.

She lies on the floor, her dæmon still where he’s fallen beside the wall. She’s not badly hurt – not physically, at least – but she just can’t summon the strength to get up. What’s the point, when she can’t get out of this room? 

Somehow, her eyes are dry. She’s not crying, but she doesn’t care one little jot about that now. What she’s feeling now is beyond tears, beyond anything she’s ever felt before: utter despair. Because she knows there’s no way out, and there never will be.

She staggers to her feet. “What do we do?” she says to herself. Her dæmon scurries across the room and flows into her arms. She pulls out a chair and sits down because she doesn’t trust her treacherous legs to hold her own weight.

“We could pick the lock,” says Ozymandias. “If you have a hairband or something – “

“No,” she says. “It won’t do any good. If we escape, we need to have somewhere to go, and… there’s no-one we can trust, no-one we can go to. We’re thirteen with no-one to help us, and she has the full weight of the Church behind her. What hope do we have?”

The answer is none, and she knows it and so does he. They have no chance of escape, of freedom.

She buries her head in his fur and they cling to each other desperately, because they can’t trust anyone, can’t ever be close to anyone, but each other. They’re alone, now and forever. 

Something flows through her suddenly: some kind of determination, a streak she’d known about but never liked. The same thing that makes her tear up Marcel’s essays when his dæmon teases hers. There’s something in her that can’t take any slight, any insult, any defeat, without wanting revenge. 

And she was going to get it: not now, but someday, she was. She’d learn everything Maman had to teach her, and she’d use it to surpass her until she was the puppeteer pulling the strings of the entire Magisterium. Until she could make them do whatever she wanted.

And then she would utterly destroy her mother. Death was too good for that woman. She’s going to break her completely, make sure she knew that she had pushed her daughter too far. Despite everything, a savage smile crosses her face.

~ ~ ~  
At some point, she starts to feel hungry. She realises she hasn’t eaten anything more than an apple since breakfast that morning. How long has she been locked in? There’s no clock, no windows, so she can’t track the time, and the parlour is a rarely-visited room so there isn’t even the sound of footsteps to help her work out what’s happening.

But she knows it’s been a long time, knows she has to eat soon. She decides to sleep, because it could be night, because she can’t emerge an exhausted, dishevelled wreck when she has to be a perfect angel of a daughter, because it will distract her from the darkness of her thoughts.

There’s nothing she can use: no blankets, no furs, only Ozymandias to use as a pillow, and although he says nothing, she knows he won’t appreciate being used to rest her head on. And she can’t sleep, anyhow: the ache in her stomach won’t let her, not until she’s eaten.

So she paces around the room, again and again until she’s dizzy as well as hungry, and longing to escape more than ever. And she keeps pacing, gritting her teeth. “I have an idea,” she says finally, and Ozymandias knows immediately. He doesn’t like it, but she’s not giving him a choice.

He sits against the door and glares at her with his little beady eyes, and she walks to the other side of the room. It’s about two or three metres across, far enough that it begins to stretch their bond. Exactly what she wants. She stands next to the wall, not leaning back or sitting down but staying strong and upright just as always in what Maman would have called a perfect lady’s posture.

The pain of being far from her dæmon distracts her from her hunger and tiredness and despair, and unlike all of that this is something she’s doing willingly to herself, something she can control. And that makes it so much easier: just knowing she has the power to stop it makes it easier to bear without having to stop anything.

It could be days or hours that she’s locked in: she sleeps fitfully, in short bursts, and paces around the room, and sits, and supresses any treacherous thoughts, until finally she hears the key turn and the door creak open.

She’s sitting down in one of the chairs, facing away from the door, when it happens, and she forces herself to rise slowly, elegantly, and survey the maid who enters disdainfully, saying nothing.

“Your mother asks that you report to the dining room,” says the maid.

Marisa nods and stalks out of the room, knowing that even now she’s no longer locked in she’s not free. She’ll never be free.

In the dining room, there are two places set at the table, and two plates laden with food: beef steak with potatoes and spinach. Marisa longs to lunge for the plate and hoard it away to be devoured, but she knows she has to restrain herself because at one of the places sits Maman.

“Marisa,” she says, still sounding cold.

“Maman.” Her voice is quiet and empty, and it sounds like someone else, someone broken. 

“Sit down.”

Marisa sits.

“What do you have to say?”

“I’m sorry, Maman. I shouldn’t have disobeyed you. Please, forgive me.”

“It’s not my forgiveness you need. It’s the Authority’s, because you have sinned against him and you must repent.”

Marisa nodded. “I know, Maman. I understand.”

“Then you may eat.”

Marisa doesn’t need telling twice, but she does make sure to eat like a lady, not like the ravenous wolf she felt like: slowly and elegantly, following all the rules of etiquette, just as she had been taught. 

Maman stands up to leave without a word, but at least this time she doesn’t lock the door. That was something, at any rate.

Once Marisa has finished eating, she leaves for her room, where she can hopefully find something to distract her. She doesn’t get that far, though, before she sees her brother in the living room, working. But unlike usual, she really doesn’t feel like talking to him. They’ve always been close before, but what Marisa has been through ever since that night has changed her into someone who now has little in common with her younger brother.

He looked up and smiles as he sees her. “Marisa!” he says. “I haven’t seen you in days! Where’ve you been!”

“Wait… days? What day is it?”

“The twenty-third of June.”

That means she’s been locked up in the parlour for two days. No wonder she feels so awful. “Two days…” she says slowly. “You’ve been worried about me?”

“Well, yes. I’m your brother, I care about you. Of course, I’d want to know where you are when you disappear for days on end.”

“Did you ask Maman?”

“Yes, but she just slapped me and told me not to pry into things that didn’t concern me.”

“Then I probably shouldn’t tell you.”

“I can keep a secret, Marisa. No-one will ever hear a word about it. I promise.”

But Marisa finds herself reluctant to confide in him, for more than one reason. She wants to protect him from Maman, she always has. She just wants to look after her little brother and stop him doing anything stupid. And she really doesn’t want to talk about what’s happened.

“No,” she says. “You don’t need to know, you don’t want to know, and I don’t want to tell you.”

And with that, she turns and walks upstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I actually completed something! I feel like it worked fairly well, and at least that's one plotbunny out of my head.
> 
> I don't plan to write a direct sequel to this, but I do plan on writing something else set in this 'verse, and no, it's not entirely Masriel. I have some very different plans to explore something I don't feel has been done enough. Watch this space!


End file.
